Crazy Shrine Men

Last weekend I went to Sapporo for the annual Yuki Matsuri (snow festival). I got there on Saturday, which also happens to be Sentsubun Hi. Setsubun Hi is a traditional Japanese holiday where people (mostly children I think) dress up like monsters while people throw roasted beans on them. This is done to ward off the evil spirits and welcome the good ones for the new year.
I really wanted the chance to throw beans at cute Japanese children dressed up like demons so my first destination in Sapporo was the Hokkaido Shrine. Sadly, I got there at 1:30 which I discovered is half an hour after the celebration ended. The shrine was still crowded, though, so I walked around it and looked around for a while. I'm discovering that all shrines are layed out pretty similarly.
The weird thing about my visit was that once again a man approached me and started to talk to me in English. This one was much more visibly strange than the last. He was wearing all bright red and had about 6 cameras around his neck. He asked us where we were from and when someone in my group said Pennsylvania and another said California he immediately replied by referencing the two ships that the Japanese bombed at Pearl Harbor. What a way to start a conversation, I thought. He went on to talk to us in broken English (even though I kept trying to get him to speak Japanese in the hopes of understanding him better) about how he was a soldier and about Japan in WWII. First of all, this guy definitely wasn't old enough to be a soldier when Japan had a standing army, and second of all, he was being rather tactless in his discussion of WWII around a group of Americans. He started talking about Iwo Jima and when my friend mentioned that his great uncle died at Iwo Jima his demeanor towards my friend changed completely. He insisted on taking a picture with the kid because "he was a soldier". When I didn't know who the director of the new movie about Iwo Jima is the man called me stupid. I was quite confused why he was being so abrasive while being so jovial. We kept trying to leave but the man wouldn't stop talking. Eventually, we hurried him along and went on our way.
Strange that the past two times I've visited Shinto shrines I've been confronted by men who want to talk about WWII and Japanese power with me. I am definitely beginning to think its true that they feel that they can get away with this talk around me because I am a foreigner. I also am starting to think that these men long for the days of State Shinto, when Shinto was institutionalized and the emperor was God. I haven't seen these men at Buddhist temples, only at shrines. Both times they have approached me because I was a foreigner-our conversations always begin in English and the first question they ask me is where I am from. Once I say America, the rant begins and I am left to silently stand there and listen. While I always find our chats interesting, I'm starting to get a little weirded out by them. If I ever get approached again, I think I will lie and say I am from South Africa...I am curious to see how our conversation would develop from there.